feelvsfilTell them apart

Which to use

“feel” and “fil” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#11,877
“feel” frequency rank
#35,592
“fil” frequency rank
47469
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature feel fil
Definition tato, sensação, percepção, impressão fio

Same sound, different letters: feel vs fil

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 2 letters.

4 ch
feel
3 ch
fil

Ear matches; page differs - feel and fil

This is the hard kind. feel and fil are pronounced identically (/fiːl/) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47469, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

feel is recorded at frequency rank #11,877, classified as anoun, pronounced /fiːl/. fil is at rank #35,592, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fil/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 47469, this pair ranks #17,775 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of feel vs fil

Shared letters: fl. Private to "feel": e. Private to "fil": i.

"feel" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "fil" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • feelefel · feell · fele · ffeel

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "feel" for "fil" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (/fiːl/), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "feel" or "fil" show up more?
"feel" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,877 in our Portuguese list, against #35,592 for "fil". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've separated the homophone pair "feel" / "fil". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "feel" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fil" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #17,775 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "feel" and "fil" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fil vs filão". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #17,775 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list